


A Timely Intervention

by Wildcard



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, Everyone lives, F/M, Fix-It, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-12
Packaged: 2019-11-15 23:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18083012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wildcard/pseuds/Wildcard
Summary: Erik's family doesn't die.This changes everything.





	A Timely Intervention

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



> I loved the prompt of Erik's family not dying - because I felt just as bad when they did, it was so unfair! - and decided to write 3 AUs of it. I hope you enjoy them!

The arrow sped at her faster than the human eye could follow. Nina was focused on the birds swarming the captain's face, but one bird saw the arrow leave the bow.   
  
A human couldn't have caught that arrow in midair. Maybe a mutant could have.   
  
A bird certainly could.   
  
Black talons closed around the wooden arrow and the raven squawked its defiance at the humans who'd tried to hurt their friends.   
  
Her father's eyes widened with horror as he saw where the trajectory of the arrow would have led.   
  
"My _daughter_ ," Erik said and his voice was choked, hoarse as if he'd been half-drowned and revived. "You would have killed a _child_?"   
  
There was no chance for the soldiers to reply. The locket around Nina's neck snapped free, flying and flattening itself as it did so.   
  
"Close her eyes," Erik ordered and her mother's hand came down over her eyes, blocking her view. She could feel her mother shaking against her, one arm around Nina protectively and her hand over Nina's eyes.   
  
" _Eema_ , no, let me help--" She started to say, wriggling indignantly to get free. In response, her mother pulled her closer, turning her so that her face was buried against her mother's chest.   
  
"Don't watch," her mother whispered, her voice quaking and as rough as Erik's had been. "You don't need to see this, liebling."    
  
There were several soft thumps of heavy things hitting the forest floor and then her mother gathered her up the way she used to when Nina was tiny.   
  
"Back to the house." Her father's arms surrounded her, pressing her against her father's chest and blocking her view still. "Come, Nina. We're going far, far away from here."

  
  
\------------

 

Canada was indeed very far away from Europe and the cabin her father picked out was far from human civilization. He'd purchased a satellite phone and used it to look at the news, accessing the Internet through some complicated means that Nina didn't quite understand.   
  
They had no TV but they did have a laptop for Nina to play games and watch movies. Her father would go to the city once a year and return with a suitcase full of DVDs and books. After she turned nine, he purchased her an ebook reader and his yearly visits to civilization included loading the reader with every book he thought she'd like or was by an author she liked.    
  
Her education was haphazard but thorough. From her father, she learnt English, Hebrew, history, geography and how to control her powers. From her mother, she learnt mathematics, painting and how to cook the dishes that would always make her father smile.   
  
When her parents argued, they did so discreetly, only ever having their arguments at night when they thought Nina was sleeping. Sometimes, she crept onto the stairs and listened to their conversations in the living room below.

"-- shouldn't tell her such stories, Erik, you'll frighten her."   
  
"The world is a frightening place. When we're gone, she'll need to know how to protect her herself- and whom to protect herself from."   
  
"You'll make her fear everyone! Can't you contact that friend of yours, the one who ran a school for mutants--"   
  
"He'd give her to the government if he thought it was for the greater good. She's safer here, with us."   
  
"But when we're gone--"   
  
"When we're gone, she'll be strong enough to stand alone. I don't tell her of the camps and the Nazis to scare her but to teach her. She needs to know she must fight, when the time comes."   
  
"...When the time comes? You're so sure it'll be necessary?"   
  
"They came for us in Poland. They'll come for us here. It's only a matter of time." Softer then, his voice dropping so low that Nina had to strain to hear his words, "I lost my family once already. I won't let it happen again."   
  
A pause, then a correction.   
  
"I won't let it happen to her."   
  
Stomach churning, Nina crept back to her bed. The stories her father told her of hunting Nazis all over the world, of getting revenge for his family, were stories in which he was the hero and the good guy won.    
  
The conversation she'd overheard put the stories into a new perspective.    
  
If they'd killed her father that day in the forest, killed her mother as well, it would have been Nina who would've had to kill the soldiers for revenge. It would have been Nina carrying the same burden that her father had labored under for so many years.

 

\------------

 

" _Abba_ ," she asked, smoothing her hand down the flank of the giant moose that was casually lipping at her hair. "I know you say that humans can't be trusted, but what about other mutants?"   
  
Her father's hand stilled. The piece of metal he'd been shaping with slow strokes of his thumb hung suspended in the air, a half-formed replica of the moose that Nina considered her special friend.

"Why do you ask, Nina?"

"We can't be the only two mutants in the world. You said that the man who ran the experiments - the bad man - was a mutant too. Aren't there any other good mutants like us?" She worded the answer carefully, not using Shaw's name. The flicker of pain that always crossed her father's eyes at that memory was something to be avoided at all costs. Calling him 'the bad man' was childish but it didn't hurt her father to hear.   
  
"...Yes," her father said after a few minutes, reaching out to smooth her hair down against her cheek. "There are."

  
  
\------------

 

The white-haired blur of motion that ran into the cabin, zipped around, then stopped in front of Nina only to talk so quickly that she couldn't understand a word, eventually ran out of air.   
  
"This is Pietro," Erik said, resting a hand on his shoulder as if to keep him from running off. "Your half-brother."

 


End file.
